This parapet bounded a block of the quay, which was very short and very narrow.  Under it the high wall, the Effroc stone, buried itself perpendicularly in the dark water below.

Gwynplaine stopped at the parapet, and, leaning his elbows on it, laid his head in his hands and set to thinking, with the water beneath him.

Did he look at the water?  No.  At what then?  At the shadow; not the shadow without, but within him.  In the melancholy night-bound landscape, which he scarcely marked, in the outer depths, which his eyes did not pierce, were the blurred sketches of masts and spars.  Below the Effroc stone there was nothing on the river; but the quay sloped insensibly downwards till, some distance off, it met a pier, at which several vessels were lying, some of which had just arrived, others which were on the point of departure.  These vessels communicated with the shore by little jetties, constructed for the purpose, some of stone, some of wood, or by movable gangways.  All of them, whether moored to the jetties or at anchor, were wrapped in silence.  There was neither voice nor movement on board, it being a good habit of sailors to sleep when they can, and awake only when wanted.  If any of them were to sail during the night at high tide, the crews were not yet awake.  The hulls, like large black bubbles, and the rigging, like threads mingled with ladders, were barely visible.  All was livid and confused.  Here and there a red cresset pierced the haze.

Gwynplaine saw nothing of all this.  What he was musing on was destiny.

He was in a dream—­a vision—­giddy in presence of an inexorable reality.

He fancied that he heard behind him something like an earthquake.  It was the laughter of the Lords.

From that laughter he had just emerged.  He had come out of it, having received a blow, and from whom?

From his own brother!

Flying from the laughter, carrying with him the blow, seeking refuge, a wounded bird, in his nest, rushing from hate and seeking love, what had he found?

Darkness.

No one.

Everything gone.

He compared that darkness to the dream he had indulged in.

What a crumbling away!

Gwynplaine had just reached that sinister bound—­the void.  The Green Box gone was his universe vanished.

His soul had been closed up.

He reflected.

What could have happened?  Where were they?  They had evidently been carried away.  Destiny had given him, Gwynplaine, a blow, which was greatness; its reaction had struck them another, which was annihilation.  It was clear that he would never see them again.  Precautions had been taken against that.  They had scoured the fair-green, beginning by Nicless and Govicum, so that he should gain no clue through them.  Inexorable dispersion!  That fearful social system, at the same time that it had pulverized him in the House of Lords, had crushed them in their little cabin.  They were lost; Dea was lost—­lost to him for ever.  Powers of heaven! where was she?  And he had not been there to defend her!